Today's Vote In Ukraine Will Shape Union's Future

Ukrainians Are Sure To Approve Independence, But Gorbachev Can't Imagine A Soviet Union Without Their Republic.

December 1, 1991|By Chicago Tribune

KIEV, U.S.S.R. — Ukrainians are virtually certain to vote overwhelmingly for independence today, sounding the death knell for the already enfeebled Soviet Union.

The Ukraine, the most populous and economically important republic after Russia, has 52 million people and a territory the size of France that produces much of the union's food and provides much of its industrial base.

Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who has been struggling to keep his country in one piece since the attempted coup in August, has often said he could not imagine the Soviet Union without the Ukraine.

And last week the Bush administration signaled it was prepared to acknowledge an independent Ukraine. On Aug. 1, less than three weeks before Communist hard-liners seized the Kremlin, President Bush, visiting Kiev, warned Ukrainians against ''suicide nationalism.''

On Saturday the Tass news agency reported that Gorbachev telephoned Bush, telling him Ukrainian independence could mean ''catastrophe'' for the Soviet Union, as well as for ''the Ukraine itself, for Russia, for Europe and the world.''

Today's referendum - which polls show has the support of at least 75 percent of Ukrainian voters - could effectively end the debate about whether the Soviet Union can be preserved and mark the start of a debate about the shape of what would replace it.

''There is no more Soviet Union as the unitary state we have known,'' said a Western diplomat. ''The independence of the Ukraine assures that. Perhaps we are now talking about something more like an international organization, but who knows?''

Even those who will lead the Ukraine into the future - the republic is also holding its first multiparty presidential election today - don't know the answer to that question.

''We see in the future not the Soviet Union but some other kind of union that will emerge on the territory of what was the Soviet Union,'' said Nikolai Mikhailichenko, campaign manager for Leonid Kravchuk, an ex-Communist who is running for president as a democrat.

Six candidates are running for president, but only Kravchuk, the chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament, and Vyacheslav Chornovil, a journalist and former dissident, are serious contenders.

''We will need a superstructure over the basis of the old union, but that is all,'' Chornovil said. ''Travel without visas, coordinated customs norms, things like that, like the EC (European Community).''

The Ukraine, which declared independence after the failed coup, has refused to take part in negotiations to write a new union treaty. Just last week, it refused to send a delegation to meetings where seven of the 12 remaining republics were to have signed the treaty.

Kravchuk has appealed to voters by presenting himself as a centrist who would guide the Ukraine's independence through moderate reforms, streamlining the bureaucracy while not tearing down structures that work - even if inefficiently.

Chornovil, who spent 15 years in prison for his democratic ideas, favors more radical reform. He has called for the quick dismantling of state bureaucracy and an end to government involvement in business and farming.

His new union would have only a small place in it for Gorbachev.

''He will wind up as a president without power and without territory,'' Chornovil said.

Both candidates favor the quick introduction of a market economy, and they endorse private ownership of property, clearing the way for foreign investment.

''We want to be exploited; it will be profitable for us,'' Chornovil said, inviting foreign investment. ''Come and exploit us.''

Kravchuk and Chornovil said they support an independent Ukrainian army, created out of the 1.2 million troops the Kremlin formerly had stationed in the republic, along with military equipment and strategic weapons.

The Ukrainians have balked at shipping long-range nuclear weapons to Russia and instead want to destroy the weapons themselves under international supervision.